Four Leaps // One Point features four short works by emerging contemporary dance choreographers; Kerryanne Mayhew, Celina Torres, Bella Wilson, and Amelia Chong. Curated by Dycypher Productions, the programme is inspired by Malia Johnston’s Miniatures, first staged in 2004 and since restaged twice more in 2007 and 2016. Four Leaps // One Point draws on Miniatures’ themes of beauty in the smallest circumstances of life, and the nonsensical and unnecessary burdens we place on ourselves. A diverse programme, Four Leaps // Once Point is an insight into the choreographic interests of four emerging artists.

Kerryanne Mayhew’s ISO [In Search Of] is dark and insecure work that integrates front on and top down projection with movement against the Basement’s black walls. Compressed flickering white squares flash to the beep of a submarine radar, slowly growing in both size and frequency, paying homage to Miniatures’ cubic visual theme. The three performers are initially curious but cautiously distanced from the boxes but as they grow the dancers find themselves defined and trapped by the increasingly complex projections. Opening night nerves get the better of sharp timings and transitions, and the performers are often dwarfed by the impressive and intriguing projections.

STILL LIFE, created by Celina Torres, is a comical and quirky Toy Story narrative shining light on the daytime activities of living room furniture, furnished with a jazzy track that would equally be at home in a 1960’s elevator as a cake decorating computer game. The performers groove from deadpan mannikins, to excessively expressive mimes. Weight bearing and suspension duets and trios are entertaining and satisfying, their movement growing increasingly chaotic. The dancers are engaged and present, their energy and dynamic increasingly warming up throughout the work. STILL LIFE effectively establishes a believable world that carries a playful narrative through an accessible arc.

Bella Wilson’s LET/HOLD/RUN is an internal conflict offered as an identically dressed, but contrastingly performed duet. Angsty, sentimental, and confused, the internal characters struggle with expression, variant word plays and coherence. We see some beautiful movement phrases- including the duo spinning on an off-kilter axis, dropping to the floor while maintaining their momentum, highly attuned to one another. The ending arrives suddenly and leaves the resolution (and/or continuance) of the work unclear.

Closing the programme is the programme’s strongest work NAMUH, choreographed by Amelia Chong, that tests the Cartesian mind/body split. A crinkling, rustling, hatching tarpaulin works its way onto the stage and gives birth to upside down women with twisted and turned-in legs for torsos, floor length black skirts covering their ‘lower’ upper bodies completing the illusion. Walking, twisting, bending, familiar movements are wrapped in morbid fascination. Throughout the work bodies are continually spliced and reconstructed, recovered and distorted again, altered and redesigned, bacterial, with a mystic and alchemic tone. Kisha September, Maria Lealiiee, and Emma Cosgrave deliver a fearsome performance, dripping in power and dabbling in madness, as they weave the argument of complexity against the view of separation.

Four Leaps // One Point is running until the end of the week at Basement Theatre.

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